There was chaos at Manchester Airport on Tuesday (January 17) after an IT fault, which mainly impacted baggage drop-off areas, causing delays and forcing travellers to queue for a number of hours with their luggage.
Video footage shared with the Manchester Evening News by a traveller shows a pile of suitcases that had been blocked off, as queues of people formed at the drop off point in Terminal One. The passenger told of how they queued for more than two hours.
The IT failure also caused some departure boards and other information screens become blank, but baggage drop-off areas seemed to be the worst affected. Terminal One was particularly impacted, becoming 'rammed', with scores of passengers seen queueing up in video footage beside a number of bags.
READ MORE IT systems outage at Manchester Airport leads to 'painfully slow' delays in 'rammed' terminal
The airport said they had 'contingencies' in place while the IT systems were down with staff on hand in the terminals to support travellers. The issue first reported to passengers around 6am with restorations taking place just after 1pm, with residual delays remaining for some time.
Disgruntled passengers spoke to the Manchester Evening News about their experiences on Tuesday, calling delays at baggage drop-off as 'painful' with many claiming they queued for a number of hours. The airport confirmed there were no flight cancellations and that an increased number staff were on hand to provide assistance.
One passenger took to Twitter to thank the airport staff for their efforts in resolving the issue, writing: "I would like to take the time to thank the staff at T1 for doing there best and keeping everyone calm this morning’s chaos and helping to get us checked in."
The last update given by the airport on Tuesday, at around 1pm, thanked passengers for their understanding and confirmed no flights had been cancelled due to the IT failure, but some may have experienced delays as the fault was being restored.
A statement read: "Following the IT issues we experienced today, we are pleased to report our systems are currently being restored, though this may take some time to complete.
"Security waiting times are under 30 minutes in all Terminals. Congestion within the Terminal 1 check-in hall has reduced significantly, and we thank passengers for their patience and understanding. There have been no flight cancellations due to the IT system outage, though some people may have experienced short delays, for which we apologise."
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